


Her Reverie

by exceptionallyunfortunate



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Birthday Sex, Brother/Sister Incest, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Frottage, Heteronormativity, Hospital Sex, No Spoilers, Non-Consensual Somnophilia, POV Third Person, Pre-Canon, Present Tense, Simultaneous Orgasm, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:34:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29275530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exceptionallyunfortunate/pseuds/exceptionallyunfortunate
Summary: It’s Maria’s 18th birthday and Carlos has feelings about it.
Relationships: Carlos/Maria
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	Her Reverie

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story about an adult making sexual contact with his comatose teen sister on her birthday, yes.
> 
> More detailed content notes:
> 
>   * A few religious (Christian) references
>   * The tiniest imaginable speck of food kink
>   * An itty bitty bit of cardiophilia, if you want to read it that way
>   * Almost no dialogue
>   * Carlos is really heteronormative
>   * No spoilers for Zero Time Dilemma besides backstory
> 


The nurse has a stern look to her, but she gives a sympathetic nod at the objects in Carlos’s hands: a bright cupcake in a plastic shell and bundle of colorful balloons, both purchased at the hospital. He already knows where Maria’s room is—it hasn’t changed in six years—but she guides him there anyways, explaining that Maria has been running a slight fever, so the staff removed her blankets to help her cool down. Like a dutiful brother, Carlos nods and accepts her reassuring arm squeeze at the door before he invites himself in.

Maria lies on the bed in just her hospital gown. Another patient might have been overwhelmed by gifts—flowers, cards, toys, treats—but the room looks as plain and unremarkable as usual, exactly as it had been that morning. It doesn’t surprise Carlos that there is no one left. Only he would be there for his sister on her 18th birthday.

He leaves the balloons floating by the door and deposits the cupcake on the bedside table before pressing one large palm against his sister’s forehead to check her temperature. Her heart rate hookup could have told him the same thing, but the soft warmth of her skin feels comforting against his.

As Carlos settles in his usual chair and unboxes his cupcake, he remembers that his sister hasn’t eaten real food in six years. A normal 18-year-old might be having a wild party that night with all her friends, eating cake for herself and maybe experimenting with alcohol or a boyfriend. A normal girl would be surrounded by friends and family and people who love her.

Maria’s pulse beeps steadily, but Carlos’s own heart aches as he remembers his own 18th birthday, just months before the fire that stole so much from them both. Like a typical teenager, he hadn’t been terribly keen on his kid sister hanging around him while he and his friends snuck into the yard to sample a smuggled beer for the first time. He had shoved her a little too harshly to be kidding and had told her to go stuff herself with cake instead.

Lost in thought, he scoops some frosting off the top of the cupcake with his index finger. The color is pink and reminds him of the gaudy lip gloss Maria had insisted on buying for herself the last time they went to the mall together. Without really planning to, Carlos brings his finger to his sister’s lightly parted lips and pushes the tip between them.

The pad of his finger slides in easily and finds her tongue warm and wet. For a moment, he lets himself linger there, one finger breaching his sister’s soft body. He can’t help but fixate. His thumb traces the outline of Maria’s bottom lip, so full and supple, untouched for the past six years, both by food and by the touch of another person.

When he finally pulls his finger out and wipes it off on Maria’s pillow, it’s with a pensive awe for the woman she has become. Without a sheet to hide her body, Carlos can see her whole figure laid bare on the bed, covered only by a flimsy gown. Over the course of his daily visits, it had never quite registered before that his sister was no longer the same tiny 12-year-old that she used to be. Her peacefully sleeping face had become longer, more mature… and her body had, as well. If she could stand, she would be able to rest her face squarely in the nook of her brother’s sternum, and he would be able to wrap his strong arms around her fragile frame and bury his nose in her hair.

His calloused palm caresses the side of her neck, tracing along her exposed collarbone. With just a moment of hesitation, Carlos then presses his hand flat over Maria’s heart. He can feel its faint beat through her warm skin and it… flutters? The beep of the monitor across the bed confirms it too—that her heart skips ever so slightly and picks up just a bit faster.

Carlos can’t help thinking about the crushes and heartbreaks Maria should have had by then. How many boys would have made her heart race and ache and break? How many men would have flirted with his baby sister, held her, kissed her, run their hands across her body—?

Of its own accord, his hand dips to cup her breast.

It’s soft and warm under his fingers, even through the papery fabric of her hospital gown. Carlos almost wants to weep at how perfect it feels. Maria is untouched, pristine, and as pure as the holy virgin she was named after. Even with her teenage years stolen away from her, she has still developed into a mature, intelligent woman. She still has room for so much life inside of her.

Something inside Carlos stirs. His jeans feel just a little too tight as his eyes drink in more of his sister’s body. Maria’s breasts really have developed quite a lot. The tiny peaks of her nipples poke through from under the gown.

Carlos slides his hand down over her stomach. It’s taught and flat, having subsisted on a liquid diet for the past six years. So different from the childish chub he remembers teasing her for. She would be so pleased to know that puberty had worked in her favor, if only she could reconnect with the world around her.

Maria’s hospital gown is short, barely reaching her mid thighs. Her legs are long and slender, resting delicately on the cold white hospital bed as if made of spun glass that might break under the wrong touch. Her thighs have a shape to them—a gentle slope that disappears under the crinkly fabric. Carlos’s hand finds her hip, full and curved and so much rounder than he could ever remember her body being. The woman beneath him almost feels like a stranger—like somebody he’s never seen before. How much had she changed while she was lost in reverie?

Sitting has become uncomfortable, and Carlos feels the urge to move closer buzzing through his veins like adrenaline. He stands and leans over the bed, propping himself up with one elbow on his sister’s pillow, using that hand to stroke her pale blonde hair. It’s silky and fine, and the image of Maria, nude, being bathed by a nurse flashes through his mind.

He kisses her forehead and his groin presses against the side of the bed. Somehow, his penis has become extremely hard—harder than he could ever remember it being. The sensation makes him groan in relief, and he grips Maria’s hair perhaps a little too tightly. It’s been so long since he’s dated or even thought of being intimate with another person. Most nights he’s too exhausted from work or too worried about scraping together enough to get by to even consider taking care of his own needs.

What is it then, about this profound melancholy he feels for the life that his sister has never gotten to live, that has gotten Carlos’s body so riled up?

As an experiment, he slowly rolls his hips against the mattress… and the sensation is incredible. His knees buckle slightly and he finds himself pressing his face into Maria’s robust chest for support. Her pillowy body smells clean, like hospital soap—so different from his own smoke and sweat. And her satin skin against his sharp nose and 5 o’clock shadow is so wonderfully sweet and alluring.

He craves more.

Before he can properly register what’s happening, his fingers make nimble work of the buttons on his sister’s gown. He pulls the papery fabric down around her waist. If she had had any inclination to move her arms, they would have been trapped at her sides.

Maria’s bare breasts are even more spectacular than Carlos could have imagined. Her nipples are small and round and pink. He thinks about the lucky man who should have been ravishing her for her birthday and wants to choke back a sob. His sister is beautiful under the buzzing fluorescent lights, her chest slowly rising and falling along the beat of the machine beside her. His hands fill themselves with her plush skin, his mouth gasping for air as he peppers her bosom with adoring kisses before capturing one of her firm nipples between his teeth.

His hips rut against the side of the mattress of their own accord. The friction feels magnificent, so much yet not enough at the same time. The weight of Carlos’s dry streak hits all at once, and his body aches with a new, deep kind of hunger that rivals the evenings when he’s too exhausted to cook and too broke to buy a meal.

He’s too far gone to stop himself as he hastily unbuttons his fly and pushes his jeans down. His cock springs free, painfully red and hot and slick with precome. It’s hard to remember the last time he was so gloriously _hard_. He moves again and his erection brushes against Maria’s hand, resting by the edge of he bed. The warmth of her perfect skin feels divine, and Carlos has to bite her breast to stifle his groan of pleasure.

He wants more. He wants so much more. He wants to know every inch of his sister, to bring her the pleasure that she, like him, had been denied for so long. He wants to take care of her, to love her, to make up for all the times he had neglected to be by her side, and to erase the guilt that haunts his dreams. To forget the bleakness of his cold, threadbare apartment and the never-ending agony of his tired body. He craves the timeline where he—they—have a family. The alternate universe where Maria is well and beautiful and thriving.

One of Carlos’s hands continues to fondle her chest, her hair, her peaceful, motionless face. But the other finds the space between her legs. Drawn in by her body heat, his shaking fingers press against the cotton of his sister’s flimsy hospital underwear.

She’s so slick that the fabric is already soaked through. Carlos’s hard fingers trace the outline of her labia, memorizing the shape of her virginal womanhood. His own heart flutters when finds the tiny, hard nub nestled between two fleshy folds of skin.

He almost misses the gentle whisper of a sigh escaping from Maria’s other pair of lips, the barely perceptible rise of her chest against his cheek. But it’s there. For just a tiny fraction of a second, it almost seems like Maria is a person, a woman, responding to the sensation of being caressed.

But as quickly as the moment arrives, it passes. The beep of the monitors pursues, unfaltered, as Maria continues to sleep, unmoving and unaware.

“Please, Maria,” Carlos prays against her skin. His erection has flagged slightly against her knuckles, the usual feelings of mourning and guilt flooding back into his mind. He knows how cruel this moment is—for him to be stealing these moments of intimacy from her, that she might never come to know with a real boyfriend of husband. He knows that no matter how dedicated he stays to her now, none of his efforts will ever guarantee her return to reality. And yet he longs for her to wake up, for her to respond to his touch, to _anybody’s_ touch.

His fingers continue to trace against her body’s opening, gliding easily against the dripping mesh of her underwear. At least in this respect, her body seems so responsive, so _alive_. She’s as mature as any 18-year-old, but so innocent without the experiences of a real adolescence to guide her.

When Carlos’s fingers skirt the elastic of the underwear and finally slip inside her, the blood comes rushing back to his member. The tight heat of Maria’s wet body engulfing his is so much more intense than he could have imagined. She must have been made for him, or at least made for this.

Her brother lets out a long whimper and reflexively climbs onto the bed, throwing one knee between his sister’s legs so he can hump against her thigh as he fingers her. His fingers pull in and out, unbroaching and rebroaching her slick entrance, pushing her inner walls open. Anywhere his mouth can reach, he leaves hungry marks across her skin. His hips roll of their own accord, his erection sliding easily against her warm, smooth skin. Her name escapes as a pant from his lips: “Maria…”

He doesn’t notice the beep of her heart rate monitor picking up speed. He doesn’t notice the way her vagina clenches ever so slightly around his fingers. As he bucks his achingly hard cock against his sister’s plush leg, Carlos is lost in his own reverie. With anybody else, this act might be wrong. But as he forces his way into Maria’s adult body, as he clamps his teeth into the supple flesh of her neck to choke his sobs, he knows that this… _this_ is the only thing that is right.

Between her heat and his, the pair glow with the warmth of a blooming flame. Carlos can feel himself reaching for his sister through the smoke, through the haze of her dreams. He calls for her: “Maria... Maria.” And maybe it’s his own desperation or the ghosts of the night they lost their parents, but he can almost hear her crying out for him too.

He’s close, so close to saving her—

The wall of fire hits all at once. Orgasm shakes his whole body. Strings of sticky semen pour over Maria’s perfect belly as her own ring of tight muscle clamps rhythmically around Carlos’s knuckles in time with his release. And in that moment, he understands for the first time the meaning of love, devotion, and faith. That even if his sister can never be rescued, he can at least give her this—a singular piece of the life she was denied.

He collapses on top of her, gasping for breath. For the span of several dozen beeps of the heart rate monitor—long enough for the quick tempo to retard into a slow, steady rhythm—the two lie still on the narrow hospital bed.

The chill of the room seeps its way back into Carlos’s body sooner than it has any right to. The white lights overhead are stern and loud, and the scent of his own sweat and come mingle heavily in the air with the sterile smell of the bed sheets. When he withdraws his fingers from their warm burrow, Maria’s vacant body gives only the tiniest clench in acknowledgment.

He uses his tongue to clean himself of her juices. The taste of his own hand reminds him of how right it felt when they had been inside her mouth instead. Sitting up, Carlos dips his index finger into the pool of cooling come spread out over Maria’s lower torso, the same way he had scooped frosting off the cupcake on the bedside table. He leans forward and carefully presses his finger into her mouth again, letting her slick tongue wipe the bead of his love off his skin.

His knees tremble a little when he climbs off the bed, but his legs hold strong like they always do. The cheap facial tissues he finds in the bedside drawer are rough against his red, sensitive skin, so different from Maria’s softness. But they are adequate, and he uses them to clean her next, mopping up the liquids they had left in their wake. Once her skin is fresh and dry again, Carlos carefully rearranges the dressing gown back over her shoulders, buttoning away the bouquet of marks he had peppered across her chest.

Even despite his new knowledge of the mature curves and slopes of her body, Maria looks… almost childlike again. Her expression is innocent and gentle as she continues to doze peacefully, her mind a million miles away. Under the glare of those fluorescent lights, Carlos no longer feels the weight of the past six years’ regret and sorrow. Instead, he sees only his sister, just as she always has been—a child, lost in reverie. A girl who needs her brother to protect her.

He reclaims his seat in his usual chair and stays by her side as he always does. Her warm, soft hand is easily enveloped in his rough, scarred ones. To any outside observer, it would look like any other day: Carlos at his sister’s bedside, retelling stories of their childhood and promising her the world once she could be cured. He drinks several more plastic cups of water than usual from the bedside pitcher and finally digs into the cupcake he had brought with him. And when it finally comes time to return to his cold, empty apartment, it is with a dear “Happy birthday, Maria. Good night,” that he whispers against her soft lips as he kisses them goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Problematic_Puppy for inspiring me to explore Carlos/Maria! 💝


End file.
